NCP-EUC Sample Questions Answers

Storage Efficiency features that will provide better storage efficiency and performance improvement for a mix of full clones and non-persistent desktops deployed via Citrix MCS on a three-node cluster are Compression and Deduplication. Compression is a technology that reduces the size of data blocks by removing redundant information. Deduplication is a technology that eliminates duplicate blocks of data and reduces storage consumption. Both Compression and Deduplication can be enabled on a per-container basis and can provide significant savings for Citrix virtual desktop deployments that use cloning technologies such as MCS2.

The schedule has two rows: one for Weekdays and one for Tuesday and Thursday.

Each row has a column for Instances, which indicates how many instances should be running during that time range.

Each row also has a column for Time Range, which indicates the start and end time for running the instances.

The time range is expressed in 24-hour format, where 00:00 means midnight and 24:00 means midnight of the next day.

According to the exhibit, the schedule Dev has the following settings:

• On Weekdays (Monday to Friday), five instances are running from 09:00 am till 05:00 pm.
• On Tuesday and Thursday, five instances are running from 00:00 am till 24:00 pm.

https://next.nutanix.com/community-blog-154/new-x-play-actions-in-prism-central-2021-7-40005

The Prism Central Playbook Action is a tool that allows you to automate tasks based on triggers, such as events, alerts, or webhooks. You can define a series of actions (called a playbook) that perform operations on your infrastructure, such as adding or reducing resources on a VM2.

To use the Playbook Action for VMs, you need to meet some prerequisites, such as:

• The Prism Central version must be 2020.11 or later.
• The AOS version must be 5.15 LTSR or later.
• The hypervisor must be AHV or ESXi.
• The VMs must have Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) installed and enabled3.

One of the possible reasons why the Playbook Action is no longer being triggered is that the virtual desktop CPU Usage alerts were not cleared. According to the Prism Central guide3, “If an alert has been triggered once and has not been cleared yet, then it will not trigger any action again until it has been cleared”. Therefore, if the CPU Usage alert remains active for a virtual desktop, it will prevent the Playbook Action from adding more vCPUs to it.

non-persistent VDI machines are deleted when they are rebooted, logged off, or shut down. Therefore, Windows Update policy should be configured to prevent automatic updates that may trigger a restart on these machines1.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-defender-for-endpoint/onboarding-and-servicing-non-persistent-vdi-machines-with/ba-p/1360721

non-persistent VDI desktops are virtual desktops that do not save any changes made by the user after they log off or shut down12. They rely on a master image that contains the OS, configuration settings, and other customizations that replicate to multiple virtual desktops1.

VMware Horizon is a solution that delivers Windows and Linux virtual desktops and published applications to end users from centralized servers.

One of the best practices for delivering Microsoft Office 365 in VMware Horizon is to disable Cached Exchange Mode for Outlook3. This can improve performance and reduce storage requirements.

There are different profile management toolsets that can be used with Office 365 and VMware Horizon. One of them is Horizon Persona Management4, which is a feature that synchronizes user profiles with a remote repository and provides a personalized desktop experience.

Another option is FSLogix Profile Management5, which is a Microsoft solution that enhances Office 365 performance in non-persistent VDI environments by redirecting user profiles to virtual disks.

https://techzone.vmware.com/resource/best-practices-delivering-microsoft-office-365-vmware-horizon

regarding replicating AppStacks between Nutanix clusters, it is likely that the correct answer would involve configuring some form of replication or disaster recovery technology on the Nutanix clusters themselves.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/solutions/details?targetId=BP-2135-VMware-App-Volumes:BP-2135-VMware-App-Volumes

Users may expect some level of personalization and consistency across their virtual desktop sessions, even if they do not save any changes1. To customize this user experience, administrators can use different solutions that manage user profiles and settings1.

This is because this option will enable the administrator to add a Nutanix cluster as a new connection by installing and registering the plugin on the Delivery Controllers that manage the connection type menu.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/solutions/details?targetId=BP-2079-Citrix-Virtual-Apps-and-Desktops:BP-2079-Citrix-Virtual-Apps-and-Desktops

one of the possible causes of poor performance in a VDI deployment is power management, which can affect CPU frequency and performance. Therefore, it is recommended to disable any power saving features on the BIOS level, such as C-states and P-states.

Another possible cause of poor performance is network configuration, which can affect network throughput and latency. Therefore, it is recommended to update network drivers and firmware on the Dell XC nodes with ESXi23, and ensure that they are compatible with Nutanix software.

alert policies are rules that define the conditions for generating alerts on Nutanix clusters1. You can create custom alert policies based on your specific needs and preferences2Playbooks are automated workflows that perform actions based on triggers such as alerts3. You can create playbooks using predefined alerts or alerts matching criteria3.

To ensure that the vice president of IT infrastructure has the best possible experience and to be notified if any CPU resource constraints on the virtual desktop, one possible solution is to create a new alert policy to alert if the CPU on the virtual desktop is over a certain threshold (for example, 80%) and configure a playbook to send a notification (forexample, via email or Slack) to the administrator23. This way, the administrator can monitor the performance of the virtual desktop and take appropriate actions if needed.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Prism-Central-Guide-vpc_2022_6:mul-alert-policies-customize-system-pc-t.html

This is because registration kiosks are used by multiple customers who do not need to personalize their desktops or applications, and who only need to perform a specific task such as registering or checking in. Non-persistent desktops can provide a secure and consistent user experience for these customers, and also reduce management overhead for the organization.

one of the possible ways to optimize the virtual desktop environment is to verify if VAAI plugin is running. VAAI (vStorage APIs for Array Integration) is a technology that enables VMware ESXi hosts to offload storage operations to Nutanix storage controllers. This can improve performance and efficiency of cloning, migrating, and snapshotting virtual machines234.

 Nutanix recommends using separate containers for persistent and non-persistent VMS. For persistent VMS, enable compression and deduplication. For non-persistent VMS, enable compression only1

According to Nutanix documentation, it is recommended to use multiple containers, with each container representing an individual performance workload. This allows for better performance isolation and easier management. For example, one container could be used for VDI workloads, while another container could be used for general-purpose workloads.

As for compression and deduplication, it is recommended to enable them for all VMs. Compression reduces the amount of storage space required and increases the performance of the system, while deduplication reduces the amount of duplicate data stored on the system. Erasure coding can also be used as an alternative to replication for data protection.

vCenter can execute approximately 640 concurrent operations before incoming requests are queued, and can support up to 2,000 concurrent sessions1. VMware Horizon 8 can support up to 120,000 active sessions in a Cloud Pod Architecture pod federation23. Therefore, if the environment has 10,000 virtual desktops, one vCenter instance might not be enough to handle all the operations and sessions efficiently. The recommended number of vCenter instances in this configuration is B (2).

This is because this option will allow the administrator to use Citrix Director to reset user profiles on a Nutanix Files share that provides high performance, scalability, and resilience3.

Citrix Profile Management is a solution that allows administrators to manage user profiles and settings across different devices and sessions12. Nutanix Files is a software-defined file storage solution that provides high performance and scalability for file data12. Nutanix Files supports all forms of profile management with efficient metadata caching techniques that optimize for faster VDI logon times12. Nutanix Files offers two types of shares: standard shares and distributed shares3. Standard shares are hosted on a single file server, while distributed shares are hosted on multiple file servers for load balancing and high availability3.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/solutions/details?targetId=BP-2079-Citrix-Virtual-Apps-and-Desktops:BP-2079-Citrix-Virtual-Apps-and-Desktops

one of the factors that affects end-user performance in a virtual desktop environment is network latency, which is the time it takes for data packets to travel between two points on a network.

Therefore, if the company wants to optimize end-user performance, they should choose a public cloud data center location that minimizes the network latency between the end user and the data center.

https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-workspace/integrate.html

The Prism Citrix Cloud integration feature allows you to configure the Citrix Cloud settings in Prism Central and connect your Nutanix cluster as a resource location in Citrix Cloud4. This enables you to use Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service to deliver applications and desktops to your end users.

To use this feature, you need to meet some prerequisites, such as:

• The Prism Central version must be 2020.11 or later.
• The AOS version must be 5.15 LTSR or later.
• The hypervisor must be AHV or ESXi.
• You must have a valid Citrix Cloud account with access to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service4.

One of the steps for configuring the Prism Citrix Cloud integration is to establish the connection to Citrix Cloud. To do this, you need to provide three pieces of information:

• Customer ID: This is a unique identifier for your Citrix Cloud account that can be found in your profile settings2.
• Client ID: This is a unique identifier for an API client that can access your Citrix Cloud account. You can create an API client in your identity and access management settings2.
• Secret Key: This is a secret string that authenticates the API client. You can generate a secret key when you create an API client2.

Nutanix offers a solution that delivers virtual apps and desktops in one click. Nutanix supports both persistent and non-persistent VDI deployments, as well as RDSH-based VMs and AppStacks.

Storage containers are logical units that group vDisks and apply storage policies such as replication factor, encryption, compression, deduplication and erasure coding3. Nutanix recommends using compression and deduplication to reduce storage usage and avoid duplicate data4.